


Old Videos

by Cookies_and_Chaos



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-19 06:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22173514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookies_and_Chaos/pseuds/Cookies_and_Chaos
Summary: Elsa watched Sam growing up and immediately knew where she had seen the things he did before, but she's never let anyone see those videos.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Old Videos

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 2019, 12 Days of Christmas Challenge

Usually Elsa managed to push the thought away to a remote corner of her mind and leave it there. Unexamined. Unintrusive. Forgotten.

Then something would happen and she would be forced to confront the thoughts, if only for long enough to shove them back in the proverbial cupboard of her mind. Back behind mental lock and key where no-one would be able to see them. 

With Sam going off to college and Casey’s track (and, she thought optimistically, the slow but sure improvements in their mother and daughter relationship) and all of, well,  _ everything _ with Doug, she had been kept so busy that she hadn’t needed to force herself to forget. And she could have gone for weeks more if she hadn’t been looking for an old book that Sam had found helpful when he was younger and about to transition into school. If she hadn’t promised to find it for one of the women at her group.

Stood on a stool, grasping for books and boxes stored on top of the wardrobe, Elsa pulled out a box of books and video tapes. She brushed the dust off the top and opened the box, finding the book she was looking for on the very top. It was what lay underneath that caught her attention. Ten or so video tapes, all neatly dated with her name and age alongside.

She ran her fingers over the labels and could immediately recall the homemade films they contained. She had watched most of them one time as an adult, and just one had received a second viewing.

The first time had been when she was 21, laughing at the typical quality of lovingly filmed homemade movies with a small child on centre stage. She laughed at her hair - the height of fashion at the time - and the hideous clothes her mother had dressed her in. Then the videos had been fondly packed away.

The second viewing, the  _ one _ second viewing, was just before Sam was assessed for autism. All the books and leaflets and doctors talked about these traits, these behaviours, that were supposedly typical for autistic children. Elsa had read those books, absorbed that information, then watched Sam play it out as part of his daily life. And she had stood there and thought that maybe those books were all wrong because Sam wasn’t behaving any differently to…

Then the videos had come back out one afternoon while Doug was at work, Sam was playing upstairs and Casey was sleeping. She didn't finish the first video. The things Sam did, the way he worked his way through the chaos of everyday life wasn’t new or surprising to Elsa because she had seen it before.

She had experienced it before.

Except there was no chance Elsa was autistic; she had laughed to the empty room at the possibility and quickly hid the videos away so she didn’t have to think about them. They tried to weasel their way back into her thoughts, and it didn’t help that she could remember vivid scenes from each of them, but life became busy and she got better at hiding it all away. Now the house was quieter, there was less to keep those thoughts away.

Elsa thought about putting one of the videos on (did she even have a video player anymore?) or taking it to someone to ask their opinion (who did she have that wouldn’t immediately dismiss the possibility or laugh?) but eventually she just put the lid back on and put the box back on top of the cupboard.

She had heard it was different now. That more people were beginning to understand. She just wasn’t sure she was ready to examine it yet.


End file.
